Highland Cove

by Dylan J. Morgan

  Unable to control the smile on his face, he placed the camera back on the bench, directed it towards the altar, and pressed record. Pulling up his sleeve, Liam checked the time. They should be meeting soon to eat before touring the asylum with handheld night vision cameras; he’d have to get back to the lobby.

  Perhaps he had time to visit one more room before meeting the others.

  “I’ll see you later,” he said to the darkness, and then hurried from the chapel.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Located at the opposite end of the asylum from the surgery and chapel, Professor Bukowski’s office lay in a state of disarray. Much of the ceiling had collapsed over time, littering the room with shards of broken tiles and dust. A cloth sofa sat against one wall, its material torn into strips. Gracing the opposite wall, a lengthy portrait of the professor stared into the room’s deepening shadows. Filing cabinets stood in a row beneath the picture, some of the drawers open but most closed tight. A heavy mahogany desk filled the centre of the room, its surface a mess of office supplies and years of debris.

  Located on the building’s second floor, the office contained expansive windows offering views of the channel and the mainland beyond. At this time of the evening, however, the black of night eclipsed everything. Trees swayed outside; in movement with the strengthening storm, their darkened silhouettes resembling something otherworldly searching for a way in.

  He stood silent in the open doorway and brushed the torch light over the chamber’s devastation.

  Glancing over his shoulder towards the lobby, he quietly stepped into the room. Dust and broken ceiling tiles cracked under his boots, the noise uncomfortably loud. Many people had scoured this room before, searching for journals and documents, anything that would fetch a high price on the internet. All those previous attempts had come away fruitless—because no one truly knew what they were looking for. Not one had the means to access the professor’s most confidential files. Only he had that knowledge.

  A dense chill settled deep in the room, the office colder than the adjoining hallway and vacuous lobby beyond. Condensation billowed on his breath, his fingers icy inside his gloves. The window frames were old and splintered with cracks from years of severe weather, allowing frozen air easy access to the room. Years of inactive heating permitted the stone walls to lock winter inside every year, adding decades of cold to what had gone before. Dots peppered the windowpanes: the first drops of rain unleashed ahead of the breaching storm. A broiling mass of thunderheads drifted over the island, adding a dark blanket to the depth of night.

  Pausing at the desk, he glanced at the large portrait, before tracing a line with the light across the canvas. Dust caught on the protruding ridges of old brushstrokes, fading the colours throughout the decades. The professor’s stern face glared from the frame, his harsh expression leaving no doubt about his superiority in this building. Finely dressed in a tartan suit, his demeanour exhibited wealth and dominance. But the portrait was damaged, the canvas spoiled by deep cuts crossing the professor’s image. Running a finger across one of the slashes, he knew instantly that nails scratching at the image had caused the damage. Had the mutilation been done in the asylum’s final hours, before its doors were locked and the power extinguished? Or had it occurred in the decades since, when darkness gripped this place? Turning from the portrait, he placed his bag on the floor near the desk and crouched behind the expensive bureau.

  The single door cupboard built into the desk hung open, its lock torn clear from the timber. He’d brought the key with him: it lay secure in the bag’s depths but no longer required. It would have been more of a surprise to find the door closed with the lock intact, but he’d brought the key anyway as a precautionary measure. The broken door opened without a sound, the beam illuminating the cupboard’s innards. A shelf placed high in the cabinet contained nothing but a thin layer of dust and below that sat a metal safe with its door cracked open an inch. The combination remained a mystery to those who came here snooping, but there were numerous ways to unlock a safe to someone desperate enough.

  Many were desperate, but desperation didn’t always succeed.

  Reaching out, his fingers were inches from the safe door when something cracked behind him. Breath locked in his throat, muscles freezing; he slowly turned to glance over his shoulder. Dust particles twisted a rapid dance on the windowsill before quickly fading and settling once more. It was probably just a strong gust of wind from the approaching storm finding an opening in the window’s rotten frame. Darkness fluttered against the wall, but with the only light in the room coming from the torch, he figured the movement was likely his own. The room settled into silence disturbed only by his slow breath releasing through his lips.

  Returning his attention to the safe, he gripped the door and opened it. The light illuminated the entire compartment, dust and two paperclips being the only remnants of the safe’s contents. He’d expected as much, everything easy to grab would have been removed.

  Applying enough pressure in each corner of the safe, he popped its metal base free and removed the thin layer to expose a timber surface.

  Using an index finger, he dragged his digit around the newly revealed section until he felt a minute alteration in the timber. Moving to the opposite corner, he located the other indentation. A smirk pulled at his lips. Still intact, and that was pleasing. Opening the zipper on his jacket a fraction, he reached inside his sweater and gripped the chain around his neck, looped it free over his head. Hanging on the necklace, the individual key swayed like a pendulum before his eyes. A narrow bow looped around the thick chain; the circular shaft short and ending in a bit that was only minimally wider than the key’s stem. Only two had ever been made and one of them lay with the decomposed corpse of Professor Bukoski in the Polish village where he’d been raised. The other fit perfectly into the first indentation and with a growing excitement he pressed it home and turned it a half rotation.

  When the lock released, he removed the key and slotted it into the second pockmark.

  Something rattled against the window and he glanced up into the night hanging thick beyond the glass. Maybe a strong gust of wind had whipped a loose section of window frame; or perhaps a branch from nearby shrubbery scratched at the thin barrier. A pale shadow floated through the night—maybe something more lurked in the darkness.

  He breathed out a laugh, scoffing at his own imagination.

  As he turned the key, the lock eased free. Withdrawing the key he slipped the chain over his neck and tucked it under his sweater. Applying pressure to the concealed cabinet he popped its lid down and pushed it further into the body of the desk. As he directed the beam into the newly opened compartment, his smirk pulled into a smile. A pile of old documents lay in the secret partition, exactly as the letter had said they would; undiscovered for six decades. Cautiously, he reached in and lifted the cover of the topmost file. Studious notes greeted him, details of the professor’s most callous experiments documented in the doctor’s own handwriting. Research left unfinished, a life’s work incomplete.

  Working swiftly, he hauled the documents from the depths of the compartment and stuffed them into his bag. Once it was empty, he pulled the wooden lid back into view, but didn’t bother securing it. There’d be no point now that he’d recovered its contents.

  Standing and lifting the bag onto his shoulder, he glanced up to the professor’s face staring down from the portrait. With a wink he turned away and noticed movement beyond the window, out in the storm. It resembled a face staring through the glass, but as it dispersed he reasoned it to be nothing more than vapour carried by the breaking storm.

  When he extinguished the torch, darkness flooded in to swallow him.

  Moving with as much silence as the dead, he hurried from the office.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Having cleared the bench seat of broken wall fragments, Julian sat heavily and ran a hand over his face. They’d just spent the last four hours wandering around the asylum’s fir
st-floor hallways and chapel, and the third floor’s operating theatre, before returning through the second-floor children’s wards. They had very little to show for it—a solitary door slam probably caused by the storm raging outside, and a few unexplained noises which might have been anything in a building as old as this.

  What a waste of fucking time.

  Exhaustion gripped him, burning behind his eyes and clouding his mind. He needed sleep, had been awake for almost twenty hours. The journey here had fatigued him, being on his feet for so many hours caused a heavy ache to pulse through his muscles, but lack of sleep always crippled him. And he was cold; damn, this building was freezing.

  But Liam wanted to review the footage, now, this instant, and he didn’t want to wait until morning.

  It already is morning, for fuck’s sake.

  Liam had insisted, Codie had agreed, so Julian had no choice. He’d sat his laptop on his thighs and fired it up. Connecting his main camera to a USB port, he streamed the video onto the computer screen. In the footage, they walked through a world turned green by infrared light, stopping occasionally to pose questions to the spirits rumoured to inhabit this place. After tonight Julian realized that the only thing this island harboured was bad weather and an even worse smell.

  Codie sat on the bench to his right, leaning against his shoulder to see the screen better. Liam had positioned himself on Julian’s left, almost squatting on the edge of the bench in obvious excitement. Julian liked the guy; at times a little too keen to do everything Codie suggested, but overall friendly and helpful. But his enthusiasm for this trip and ghosts in general was a tad annoying. Alex stood to one side, arms folded over his chest, just a deeper shadow in the building’s darkness, not even looking at the computer. Kristen had moved away, busy rolling out her sleeping bag and Julian figured she had the best idea of them all.

  The thought of lying down to sleep induced a yawn and he released it with obvious exaggeration. Having not brought a mattress with him, he’d have to lie on the cold, hard concrete floor, but that didn’t bother him in the slightest. It had to be better than watching nothing happen on the computer screen. His mind drifted into his bedroom, everything in its place with the radiator giving off comforting warmth. He’d have the curtains closed, locking out the lights of London, the room swamped in heavy darkness to encourage a deep sleep. And under the covers Charlotte would be snoring gently, wrapped peacefully in the thick, soft bed sheet. Her belly was huge now but he loved it; enjoyed spooning her with his arm wrapped around her to hold her taut abdomen. It felt like he was protecting her and their unborn child at the same time. He missed her; missed his warm bed and missed being inside his house with a storm approaching.

  Light flickered in a vain effort to scatter darkness but night reclaimed the island once more. Julian counted silently, reaching ten before a muffled bellow of thunder rippled over the island. He’d hoped the rainstorm that had assaulted the building since early evening would disperse before dawn, but it seemed that was just the prelude, and the main act would arrive shortly. Curling his toes inside his shoes, he hated how tightly the cold wrapped his feet. In fact a dense chill had layered itself all over his body, as though the building’s ceaseless cold had infected him. Wind wheezed louder through gaps in this dilapidated structure, and he longed for the subtle warmth of his sleeping bag.

  Glancing to his left, Julian said, “Do we really have to watch this now?”

  “Yes,” Liam replied. “There are just a few instances I’d like to check.”

  “But nothing happened.”

  “There’s been plenty of activity since I entered the building.”

  “I don’t see any proof of that here.”

  “Camera-shy ghosts,” Alex snorted, “that’s just great.”

  Liam glared up at the man as he stood stoic in the gloom. Julian saw that Liam hadn’t taken too kindly to the barb thrown out by Alex. Ghost hunting was Liam’s interest, his excitement, and saying something negative about it would be like telling a football fanatic that his favourite team sucked. The look Liam levelled through the darkness contained a certain degree of loathing but he wouldn’t act on it. Julian had never seen the man get into an argument, never mind a physical altercation, but he was certainly pretty good at delivering a dirty look. It didn’t surprise him when Liam looked away and back to the computer screen. Confrontation wasn’t something the guy excelled at, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Liam snapped sometime soon. Everyone had a breaking point.

  “Forward the recording to thirty-four minutes,” Liam instructed. “We were at the far end of the first-floor corridor and I’m sure I heard a disembodied voice.”

  Julian glanced across the space to watch Kristen inflate a thin mattress with a foot pump. Smart girl; getting ready for bed—lucky girl, too, being allowed to use Codie’s mattress. He’d have to make a note to bring one prior to their next documentary excursion into somewhere uninhabitable.

  With a deep sigh he pressed the button on his camera and watched the image on the computer screen whirl into fast motion. He remembered clearly that first half hour they’d spent wandering down the nearest corridor. A tangible sensation of expectancy had accompanied him, this trip being his first true ghost hunting excursion. Nervous fear rippled through him when Liam had spoken aloud to try and elicit a response; he hadn’t known what to expect, even though he never believed they’d receive any contact. As the trek had worn on, and tiredness had set in without any true sign of anything paranormal happening, he’d lost interest quickly. Whatever Liam thought he’d heard at the far end of the first-floor corridor would likely be nothing major. Julian hadn’t heard anything that resembled a voice, doubted he’d hear anything now. He wondered how many potential occurrences Liam had marked off; how long they would sit here trying to decipher whether an odd sound was the wind whistling through a derelict building or the storm battering the island outside. Another yawn materialized and he exaggerated this one even more than the first.

  At thirty-three minutes he stopped the recording and the image played back at normal speed.

  Mounted on the camera, the infrared light bathed the immediate surroundings with an invisible radiance. Shadows scampered over masonry when sections of the hall briefly came into view as the camera panned along the corridor. Codie stood near one wall, a handheld camcorder directed back towards Liam as he paused outside one of the open rooms. Kristen stood close to her boyfriend, unable to hold his hand because he gripped the camera; instead, clasping her hands together near her mouth as though ready to subdue a squeal. Julian remembered Alex’s comment when on the boat, about how a woman screaming on camera would attract more viewers. He couldn’t remember where Alex had been at the time of this recording; most likely hanging back in the darkness somewhere, but he’d been given a camcorder and was told to keep it focused on the group.

  A third yawn surfaced in probably as many minutes, but Julian did all he could to subdue it and not gape too wide.

  “There,” Liam said, “what was that noise?”

  Julian shook his head to try and disperse the intense tiredness. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Go back; about a minute.”

  He sighed, already frustrated, but Julian rewound the recording fifty seconds and pressed play.

  “Now listen,” Liam said.

  Julian’s interest had almost disappeared when Liam spoke on film to the blackness of an empty room. “Hello? Is there anybody in there?”

  Silence at first, and then a rumble permeated the darkness. With his attention focused on the unlit doorway Julian believed the noise may have come from the bedroom. The low sound lasted a couple of seconds at best, but at the time he’d thought nothing of it.

  “Well,” Liam asked them, his voice laden with enthusiasm. “What do you think that was?”

  “Thunder, maybe,” Codie said.

  Julian cleared his throat. “Sounded like a fart.”

  “Nah, it was just an echo of thunder.”
/>   “Yeah, the echo of a thunderous fart.”

  Alex laughed. “Good one, Julian. I bet no one’s ever recorded a ghost farting before.”

  There, another look of dislike again. If Liam had been made of more aggressive stuff Julian felt certain the man would have been up off the bench going toe to toe with Alex in the dirt. But Alex could say such things and get away with them, and he probably wouldn’t stop until Liam made his stand.

  Liam returned his attention to the computer and yet another potential standoff evaporated. But Liam’s exasperated sigh told Julian that the guy’s breaking point had finally been reached. He had hoped Alex would have left that bullying shit behind on the playground once they’d left school. Alex would probably take his shot every chance he got. If they planned to go on another documented ghost investigation, then Julian doubted he’d tag along if both Liam and Alex were in attendance. He, for one, had grown out of such childish disputes.

  “Codie,” Liam said, leaning forward to stare at his friend. “You don’t think that was anything? A disembodied voice, maybe?”

  Julian felt Codie shrug.

  “It might have been. We’ll have to enhance the sound when we get back to the studio on Monday and see if we can decipher it any clearer.”

  Alex took a step forward. “Look, it doesn’t matter if it was a fart, or thunder, or a ghost answering a question, we can always add something later, edit in some voices to make it more real.”

  Liam had never moved so fast, the speed with which he rose and took a step towards Alex surprising Julian so much he had to grip tight to the computer to prevent it from slipping off his lap. He’d almost audibly heard Liam’s patience finally break. Alex immediately dropped his arms from his chest, stood tall, and in the darkness Julian noticed the man’s hands curling into fists. Lurching forward with as much urgency as his buddy, Codie got to his feet and grabbed a hold of Liam before he could challenge Alex properly. Just as well, Julian thought, because one punch from Alex would have sent Liam crumpling into a heap. Alex muttered something, no doubt asking Liam if he wanted a piece of him or some other cringe-worthy comment best suited to a low budget crime movie. Codie pulled him away, and sat Liam back down on the bench.